>> i just remembered. >> i used my magic wanda to connect the two stories. >> 15 seconds. >> stock market's at an all time high. everything is up. the bulls are running wild. the bull did not make it. it died. >> what? >> not the market. >> terrible news. >> the actual physical bull. >> thanks for watching "power lunch." "closing bell" starts right now. ♪ doctor, doctor, give me the news, i've got a bad case of loving you ♪ >> hi, everybody. welcome to the "closing bell", i'm kelly evans at the new york stock exchange. joining me is dr. bill griffeth. >> stop. it's too early. >> did you notice the song? >> yeah. very clever, guys, but it's way too early right now. and you hadn't heard about the bull. >> no. no. the slow speed chase of a bull in queens. >> in queens. >> where did it come from? >> i -- i -- that i can't help you. i know where it was going, but i don't know where it came from. >> welcome back.

>> thank you. >> it's been weeks. >> nice to be back. hi, mom. here we are again. >> and happy birthday. >> yes. retail earnings, that helped send the stocks to record levels yet again today. we'll talk about how much the market is up since i was gone, but whether this is provision called the border adjustment tax, could that stall the rally, especially as it pertains to retail stocks like the ones we're seeing rallying today? we'll talk about that coming up. >> white house press secretary sean spicer was just asked about that tax plan. we'll bring you his comments shortly. warm weather in the east made for a nice weekend. it's crushing nat gas. it's down 9%. >> i can't believe you're playing this song. >> are you sure -- >> wells fargo, that saga it turns out is far from over. the bank just announcing a little while ago that four senior managers are out in the wake of the company's unauthorized account scandal. we have details on that still to

come this hour. >> but how about these markets. the dow is over 20,700 and home depot and walmart are powering it higher after reporting better than expected earnings. walmart is higher than 3%. walmart 1%. >> walmart doesn't give holiday sales before the full earnings are released. investors didn't have a clue how it went. it turns out it's pretty good. profit beat by a penny. revenue light with some negative currency drag specifically from the peso. the discounter's first quarter does bracket analyst's estimates. the all important u.s. comp sales were 1.8%. that's the best performance in 4 1/2 years. u.s. ecommerce contributed more to the comp sales with the gross merchandise value. up 36% over last year. i spoke to walmart's chief financial officer brett business on t biggs on the phone. he said we are pro tax reform

for anything that will help with jobs and help consumers. he went on to say, we do have concerns that the border adjustment tax has the probability of increasing prices. walmart's ceo was not in d.c. with eight other retail ceos discussing tax reform but is part of the americans for affordable products commission. border adjustment tax didn't come up on the call but the home improvement retailer tells me it estimates 30% potential exposure to a border adjustment tax should that come into play based on its own imports and the indirect imports of its suppliers. now the housing market continues to lift home depot's earnings beat on stronger than expected ri revenue and sales growth. full year earnings guidance is shy of consensus. home depot dipped by 29% and announced a $15 billion share buy back. back over to you. >> court, what were you just saying about the 30% implied

tax? that's what home depot tax says? >> yes. it didn't come up on the call. it wasn't something -- >> it didn't come up on the call? >> it did not. home depot isn't one of the players with the 30% that is going to see as big of an impact if we see a border adjustment tax. 30% of home depot's costs sold will be subject to a border adjustment tax. 30% is a lot lower than something like 98% which is what you're going to see from the pure apparel players. >> i thought you were saying a 30% tax. >> no. 30% would be subject -- >> exposure. the theory behind the border tax in the context of a full tax reform package is that the corporate tax lowering -- >> that's right. >> -- would offset the impact of the border tax. >> that's right. >> not taking that into account? >> no. they're just -- this is where the math gets really tricky. it gets very gray. it's not so black and white because we don't know how all the pieces will fit together if indeed the pieces come at all.

all the retailers do want lower corporate tax rates but they don't want the border adjustment tax. you may have to have one to get to the other. that's where it gets tricky. it's hard to figure out the tax rate versus the import. we don't know how that math is going to play out. >> the shares are rallying. the retail sector doing quite well. let's head down to washington where white house press secretary sean spicer just wrapped up his news conference. eamon javers has a wrapup. >> reporter: the white house is caught in a giant double pinscher here on this double border adjustment tax. you have retailers who don't like it. on the other hand you have manufacturers who do really like it. on the other hand, on capitol hill you have house republicans pushing this idea very aggressively and some senate republicans who are resisting it. so where is the white house going to come down on all of that? sean spicer was offered the opportunity to say exactly where the president stands here at this press briefing that just concluded. here's what he said. >> i think the president's been

very clear that in the next couple of weeks we expect to have a tax plan that gets out there. that is being worked on continuously and so i'm not going to get in front of that. while the ceos are here i'm sure beyond some of these things that's an opportunity for them to express what some of those policies are that are both helping them create jobs and grow in the economy and also inhibiting them. >> reporter: so if you are still scratching your head after hearing that answer from sean spicer, that probably means sean spicer did what he set out to do there and not answer the question and not put them down for any particular answer. that's something they don't want to get ahead of right now as they figure out where they're going to land in terms of the math and also in terms of the politics. sean spicer was also asked about the export/import bank, whether the president supports that or not, and he refused to answer that question as well, saying he didn't want to get out ahead of the office of management and budget but he did confirm, kelly, that the budget director is working on a budget.

>> we've got that going for us. >> reporter: nailed down that piece. >> the president does have a state of the union sort of address coming up. >> reporter: right. >> even though technically it won't be considered that. presumably that's when he could lay all of this out, right? >> reporter: yeah. absolutely. traditionally in advance of an address like that you've seen white houses in past years roll out some of the specific proposals two and three days ahead of time, so be alert towards the end of this week to see if we get some more clarity from the white house and where they stand on both of those big economic ideas. >> thanks, eamon. see ya later. stocks may be higher, but have you seen natural gas today? last we heard it was down 9%. that is still the case. jackie deangeles at our commodities desk with details. thank you, mr. weather man, or something, right? >> yeah. we all enjoyed the weekend certainly here on the east coast. the temperatures were just beautiful, but people certainly were not turning on their heaters and that's what has traders concerned here. they're looking out to the ten

day forecast and seeing that the temperatures are more mild than they have been at this time of year over the past few winters. so certainly right now it seems the worst of winter is behind us and you can see as december has rolled around we got close to $4. we've slowly been coming down. now we're closer to $2.50. a couple of things to think about here as we're heading into the summer period. the first is you've got an administration that's pro fracking. that could potentially bring supplies up more and bring these prices down and also there's some chatter about an el nino effect which could give us a little bit of a cooler summer as well. so you could see nat gas prices going under two, if, guys, we have a perfect storm. >> so to speak. >> i'm fine with the warmer winter weather, jackie. a tougher session for nat gas. all the other oil majors who rushed into that space and the prices are persistently low. >> is this what punxsutawney phil forecast? >> we talked about this. he was forecasting six more

weeks of winter and certainly what we saw this weekend was not in line with the ground hog, but i follow him closely every year and he's typically wrong so having said that -- >> there you are. >> -- let's be optimistic and hope for sunshine. >> that from our ground hog correspondent jackie deangeles. thank you. >> sure thing. >> see you later. let's get to our "closing bell" exchange this tuesday with the dow -- all the major averages in record territory. the dow is up 108 points. michael yoshikami, steven serge gillfoil and sarge 986 llc, that all fits on one business card by the way and our own rick santelli checks in from the cme. sarge, when i left two weeks ago there were debates about how over valued the market might be, how expensive it might be. i get back, we're still debating the same thing. what's going on here? >> you know, it's pretty amazing, right? every time i've sold anything in the last couple of months because it hit my target i sold

it prematurely. we've had confidence throughout the economy through the president's agenda which turned itself into earnings which turned itself now into better macro. so here we are, and that very agenda of the president, that tax reform, now has a major component which threatens the marketplace. the border adjustment, it certainly is something that is perceived as a negative. there are positives, but those positives will be down the road. the immediate impact will be higher prices and the retailers aren't too happy with that. it could be -- and the higher dollar. let's not forget to mention that. which will hurt earnings across the board. so now along with the president's speech on february 28th, those are our roadblocks. i don't know how much higher we can go in a straight line. my target for the year on the s&p is 100 points higher than this. i do think we need to correct before we go there. >> michael, a couple of other gauges of the markets, we have deal making, a potential blockbuster with unilever and kraft. we have a big ipo with snap. these are all kinds -- the

competent signs you get during bull markets. >> no, i don't think they're that confident. neither do the deals that you're seeing. there's not a flood of tech ipos. there's been a dirth of tech ipos. we have a major head wind in the markets is essentially what's going to happen with tax reform, how impactful it is going to be. you know, jeff cox had an interesting article on cnbc.com, viewers should check it out, talking about what's goldman's thoughts in terms of the market being way ahead of itself. i really am of the belief the market is ahead of itself. the market will be sloppier and it will impact growth. >> rick, what do you think? i mean, i know your primary responsibility is to cover the debt market and the currency markets for us, but even with equities, equities are moving. everybody else is marking time as we move along here. what's the market telling you

right now? >> you know, in so many ways, bill, there is only one market. yes, when you look specifically at one of the sectors, fixed income, our prices are actually higher and the yield's a bit lower than we finished last year on tens. when you look at the dollar index it's still about 2/3 of a cent away from unchanged. to the down side it's still been in the red for the year so the equity markets are the big game in town. when you left i thought we'd go higher and you're back i think we go higher. i still say my target is around 21576. i'll tell you i think it's going to happen sometime around the first, second week of march just by a count. can i be wrong? yes. what i think everybody continues to miss is how there's so much uncertainty here. doesn't anybody believe that people that are trading stocks domestically and around the globe understand, they see that, too. they're not in a darkroom with no screens. i think it's a repricing. i think the chaos in washington

is a given. it's the baseline, but what's changed this time is there probably will be something done on taxes and something done on regs. any more than that might not even be priced into the market, at least in my opinion. >> michael, if there is the kind of gibb he's talking about, 10% or so, are there some things that are comparable? >> yes, there are. let me comment about what rick said. i agree even though the market as i said perhaps is a little bit ahead of itself, i think it's going to get more ahead of itself. you're seeing, as i said several weeks ago or a couple weeks ago, you see a capitulation of the bears. people are chasing to get in the markets because he they think they're going higher. there are names that likely will be dipping down. i wouldn't chase the names that will be solely based on what's happening from a tax standpoint. i'd be looking at names somewhat out of favor, maybe there's some investment controversy. disney, espn is a imaginer concern.

i think it will be fine. it's not like the overall market has no opportunity, but i completely agree with rick. i think there's a reasonable chance we go higher from here simply because that's the narrative we're in. people want to believe. >> before we go, sarge, you and i were talking earlier, if anything you would be trading more speculative issues, not the more fundamentalists? >> my own behavior, i'm sure other traders are behaving the same way, some might not be. i'm either long or i missed the good quality names that have moved a whole ways. i'm going to hang on to those positions. i may trade around them with the top half. i'm getting more speculative. i've been buying cheaper names that have a lot of debt, some real, if you want to call it garbage, i don't know if you want to call it garbage. i won't -- >> you just called them garbage, yeah. >> not true quality, but things that are kind of hit or miss. so i've been going for some of

the really cheap energy names, some of the really cheap defense contractor names, some of them i think do have potential but they're not there yet. >> good to see you, guys. >> thank you. >> thanks for joining us on your thoughts with today's market action. thank you. so the rally continues. what is this, eight consecutive days for the dow to be up and nine out of the last ten. >> we haven't seen that since july so that includes what we've had since the inauguration. >> dow is up 105 points with about 45 minutes left in the day. snap chat is pitching its upcoming ipo. we'll get reactions to that pitch coming up. also, the trump administration may change the way it calculates certain economic data, and coming up we'll talk about whether that gives investors a better picture of the economy or not. you're watching cnbc first in business worldwide.

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your daily look at all 30 components of the dow jones industrial average. >> there are plenty in the red even though we're up 106 points. >> caterpillar is the leader on the down side on the dow 30.

more of them are up higher. get a check on some of the other movers. shares of kraft heinz and unilever all falling after kraft withdrew its $143 billion takeover offer for unilever. unilever says that that offer under valued the company but shares of mondelez are rallying on speculation that it could be a takeover target. this morning on cnbc ceo irene rosenfeld addressed that. >> there's a lot of speculation out there and we can't spend a lot of our time thinking about it. if you step back a second though, when i split the company i did it because these were two very different portfolios and they actually have shown themselves quite capable of creating great value for their respective shareholders as separate companies. our company has created over $60 billion of market cap as a result of focusing on snacks and we're just going to continue that focus. zblr wonder if she's gotten a

phone call. talk about a whopper of a deal? burger king's parent restaurant brands international has acquired the fried chicken chain which is called popeyes, louisiana kitchen, a deal for $1.8 billion or $79 a share. as a result popeyes is up 19%. restaurant international is up higher, 6.7%. >> big move for them. executives of snap holding a lunch in new york city to pitch its ipo to investors. leslie pickers is staking it out. what have you found, leslie? >> reporter: hey, kelly. we're waiting for some of the key snap executives to exit the mandarin oriental. we saw the cfo drew valero enter. we're waiting for others to come. this comes after a busy day for most of the snap executives, most importantly the 12:30 lunch

they had with hundreds of investors. i'm told by people close to the company that one of the big focuses of today's lunch was to really hone in this idea of their daily active users and how they are different from that of facebook's. their average, of course, is 158 million, which is 1/10 of the size of facebook's, but their pitch is to show that the quality of their daily active user is much higher than a normal regular social media company, so they wanted to show that engagement. another key question of investors was their cost structure. those questions were answered by drew valero, the cfo. the investors want to know why the spending on cloud services were so high. he explained it was wetter to spend for outsourcing than to do those things in house. the executive will stay in new york tomorrow before heading to boston the next day and traveling the rest of the country before pricing next week. guys. >> i've got one. leslie, first of all, welcome

aboard. i was gone while you joined us here. i am -- i am told miranda kerr, who as we all know is evan spiegel's fiance, is very upset that facebook has been copying some features of snap chat and -- i mean, what we're talking about is competition for snap chat from some of the big guys in the tech world right now. did that come up? and could that affect the valuation of the ipo, do you think? >> reporter: that's the interesting thing. none of the investors in that meeting really wanted to focus on the facebook issue, the "f" word as one of them put it. this meeting is one where the investors are trying to get investment. focusing on competition and especially facebook as we know is a big sticking point for the ceo was not going to get them allocation. i'm told surprisinsurprisingly, not a key focus of today's meetings but it's certainly a key focus on investor's minds.

it will certainly be impactful as they determine what price to buy shares of this ipo. >> yeah. i think it's better to be realistic, yes, we have this competition, here's what we're going to do about it instead of pretending it doesn't exist. you can take that up with miranda kerr. >> i'm just proud that i know about miranda kerr. >> i'm proud. thank you, leslie. leslie picker. >> see you guys. 35 minutes to go. dow's up 107 points. 20,733. i think we're up 700 points in two weeks. >> we are. >> it's about a 3% gain. you're welcome, america. s&p and nasdaq, is russell in record territory? >> should be. 1408. we closed at 1400 for the first time. bank stocks have soared nearly 30% since president trump was elected. we'll talk about why the sector could also be one of the big winners from corporate tax reform. and speaking of financial

deregulation. find out why that could end up slowing the huge growth of non-bank mortgage lenders. that's coming up on the "closing bell." this is my retirement. retiring retired tires. and i never get tired of it. are you entirely prepared to retire? plan your never tiring retiring retired tires retirement with e*trade. i'm in vests and as a vested investor in vests i invest with e*trade,

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in real estate, infrastructure and emerging markets. partner with pgim the global investment management businesses of prudential. if you're just checking in, yes, the rally continues. in fact, we're near the highs for the session right now. the dow up 118, 119 points. and walmart is the biggest

gainer for the dow today. tiffany's shares also higher on news that the luxury retailer made a deal with activist investor janet partners to appoint three new independent directors to its board. one addition is francesco trepani. he and jenna partners own 5.1% of tiffany's outstanding shares. tiffany up almost 3% today. we have developing news on wells fargo where senior managers are being terminated today. dominic chu, what can you tell us? >> kelly, i can tell you that the four managers that have been fired worked at one point in the community banking operations of wells fargo. that's one of the main parts of the bank in can he when it came to the scandal over whether potentially overly aggressive sales practices led to a lot of unnecessary client accounts being opened. now they held roles ranging from regional presidents to chief risk officers within the community division overall.

the board at wells fargo says each of the terminations was done so by unanimous decision by the board and as a result of the actions none of the terminated employees is going to get a bonus for 2016 nor will they have any benefit of any unvested stock or unvested stock options outstanding. the board made it clear that the independent investigation into its retail banking sales practices, that's still ongoing and that they expect the full inquiry to be completed by the company's annual shareholders meeting. that takes place in april, guys. now any new findings or actions that result from this investigation are going to be made public by that point so they say, so i guess right now there are still a lot of questions to be answered right now with regard to what other actions could happen, are there more terminations coming down the pike? that's going to be a big issue, guys. >> right. it would seem these are the first terminations since their initial reaction when the news broke. the congressional hearings, the ceo position itself turned over and now these four people have been let go, dom, but it doesn't

sound like this is the end of anything. >> no. no. they made it very clear during their statement that this is not the end. the investigation is still going on right now, but i guess the interesting point about this whole process is going to be what more can they find out? these are four managers in relatively senior roles but within one division that's in question at wells fargo. wells fargo is a massive banking giant so when it comes to who else could have been involved, that's going to be curious to find out whether or not other people in similar type roles throughout that operation are going to have any kind of repercussion with regard to their job or anything down the line. there's only a couple months left before the annual shareholders meeting. >> sounds like ceo tim sloane is not finished cleaning house yet. thanks, dom. it's time now for a cnbc news update with contessa brewer. >> hi. what's happening right now the department of homeland security is moving forward to implement president trump's executive

orders on immigration. the agents, the customs officers, border patrol, there will be a hiring patrol. they've been urged to ramp up catch and release. new epa administrator scott pruitt gives his speech to the agency employees. he says there's no need to compromise between protecting the environment and creating jobs. >> i believe we as an agency and we as a nation can be pro energy and jobs and pro environment, that we don't have to choose between the two. i think our nation has done better than any nation in the world at making sure that we do the job of protecting our natural resources and protecting our environment. >> senior editor at breitbart has announced he will resign from the company. of course he made some remarks that became public about pedophilia, very controversial. he said the leaving of the company is his decision alone. that's the cnbc news update at this hour. back to you. contessa, thanks very much.

maybe you've heard about this by now, but we have sad news to report. brenda buttner, she died yesterday after a very long battle with cancer. she is survived by her two adorable daughters. you know, this hits home. brenda and i were great pals about 20 years ago here at cnbc. we hosted "the money club" together. there was brenda on the set of "the money club." she was at that time the smartest person i knew. you now replace her in that regard. you remind me a lot of her. she was a rhodes scholar. she graduated with honors from harvard, but she was such a nice person. listen to this, she had a life outside television news. she actually went to california, i'll never forget this story she told, and picked lettuce with migrant farm workers just because she wanted to know what that life was like so she could

speak with authority on that. at the same time one time years ago when we had a primetime show where musical acts could come in the moody blues came to cnbc and it turned out brenda and i were huge fans of the moody blues. we went and watched them perform and afterwards got to meet the band members and we left there giggling like groupies. >> it's so inspiring honestly, especially in a business where there's not a lot of leading lights in that sense, people that do the kind of things you're talking about, go the extra mile. she was quite young. >> she was 55 years old. 55 years young. she was one of a kind. brenda buttner, my dear brenda. is is where i trade andters. manage my portfolio.

since i added futures, i have access to the oil markets and gold marts. okay. i'm plugged into equities- trade confirmed- and i have global access 24/7. meaning i can do what i need to do, then i can focus on what i want to do. vit learnfuturestoday.com to see what adding futures can do for you. we're drowning in information. where, in all of this, the stuffhat matters? the stakes are so high, your finances, yo future. how doou solvehis? you partner with a firm that advises governments and the fortune 500, and, can deliver insightersont adto person,rnments onhat matters to you. morgan stanley.

welcome back. a follow-up to a story our david faber reported last week. verizon corporations saying it will buy yahoo! for $4.48 billion. as part of the revised deal verizon and yahoo! will share some liability of the data breaches. shares are up by less than 1% bill. 25 minutes left in the

trading session with the dow still up 121 points. still in record territory. joining me on the floor of the new york stock exchange is kenny pulcari from o'neill securities. comment on this statement. stock prices will never go down again. >> isn't that the way it feels though, right? >> right? >> what do you make of this? >> it's getting to the point where it's starting to feel much more antsy up here. even though the market is up 120 points, it's not on big volume. people aren't coming and grabbing. they're pulling back. good news out of europe. better news coming out of the states. walmart, home depot. home depot blowing the doors off the bus, right? >> do you sense we're at the point now where people are getting in because they're afraid of missing -- >> fear of missing out. it's that fomo fear. >> which happens near the end. >> it happens near the top. i put it in my note this morning about that fear, exactly. people are going to jump in. they're going to go all in and then the market is going to start to back off and they're going to get frustrated.

i guess the answer is don't go all in. you could certainly get in, but do it methodically. don't be erratic about your investing. be methodical. a new move from the trump administration, thank you, guys, could change how stocks are moved. joining us now with more on what this would mean is chase chief economist anthony chan here at post 9 and height analytics henrietta trays. good to have you both with us. anthony, the journal called this single entry trade bookkeeping because the problem is if you only count these imports and not the subsequent re-export, if you will, is something missing from the whole equation? >> there clearly is. i think if you're trying to improve your negotiating ability

vooes vis-a-vis our nafta companies, it's a brilliant move. if you're looking at this from an economic perspective, the argument is less impressive. imports are when you bring products into your country and the people consume the goods. these are products that come in, let's say, from mexico and they bring in the cars and then they get re-exported and you don't count them. so it makes less economic sense to do it that way. it makes more sense if you're trying to improve your negotiating ability. >> henry etietta, what do you t of this? we were talking about rosie scenario back in the day and it seems to be back again. what do you think? >> i think this is a first act. i agree that this is not something you do for economic purposes. this is an accounting adjustment you want to make if you want to make a point. i think president trump has made several points in the course of the last two years, first of which is that america is implicitly not great currently

which is why we need to be made great again. when you artificially adjust these numbers and make it look as though we have no exports and increase imports, it stands to reason that you're just doing this as an opening act and your real goal is to have increased leverage and negotiating power when you go to congress and explain things that either they don't want to do, like imposing a tariff. trump has campaigned on the 35% tariff coming at it from mexico, or from canada, japan. the idea is to either bolster that argument and make it appear as though we have to have tariffs or something that i think is probably a little bit more realistic and encouraging for a guy like speaker ryan is if you do have a trade imbalance, we have a solution from the tax side of the code which is this border adjustment tax. and it's my sneaking suspicion that the administration is leaning ever so slightly in favor of border adjustment and increasing these numbers and artificially inflating them from a policy perspective stands to

help your case. >> anthony, is there an economic basis to do so if the argument is that you find some way to adjust the import tally, too? in other words, if you want to isolate this, show it in the data, say, hey, these are reexports, something is coming into the country and going to mexico because of nafta or what have you, you do something offsetting on the import side or you're reclassifying the data. is there as much of an improech? >> if you're reclassifying the data there's not a problem. when you take the products and they're consumed by another country, by definition they were exports. to sort of ignore that means there's no offset because the way it's done now is totally offset. when the products come in they're imports, when they leave they're exports. >> do they find a way to adjust them? right now we are just a conduit. if a car comes in from asia and goes to mexico, it passes through the u.s. we're just a conduit.

>> the best way to express that and make it more realistic is not to count them as imports because they're not consumed. >> what if they do that, too? >> if they also do that, we're okay. we go back to the neutrality. right now if it's done the way it's been proposed, it's not neutral at all. >> henrietta, there's a fear if there's no border tax then there's no tax at all because you have to figure out how to offset the decline in corporate taxes if you do that. do you buy that notion? >> i don't. i think that that's where we are today but seven, eight months from now as we head into the third or fourth quarter and we don't have tax cuts, which is the principle pillar of the republican party, they'll look somewhere else. right now there's a gold standard that is deficit neutrality. that will be maintained for another few quarters but that's it. i can't get you the votes for a border adjustment tax in the senate where they have a very slim republican majority of 52 votes.

that's what you're going to need in order to push this through. for the time being deficit neutrality requires border adjustment, but it's my opinion that ultimately deficit neutrality is not going to be the same shiny beacon and we'll get something as a tax driven stimulus. it's a change in corporate tax rates and changes to the international tax structure and most of that is deficit finance. >> henrietta treyz, henry chan, talking reexports. thank you both. >> thank you. we have a news alert on bristol-myers. taylor mathisen. >> bristol-myers stock is up about 2.5%. was up by more than that on word that the investor carl icahn has taken a stake in that company. icahn, he says, sees bristol-myers as, one, a possible takeover target and, two, a company with a lot of value embedded in its drug pipeline. we've got phone calls out. our resident carl icahn expert,

scott wapner, trying to reach out to mr. icahn and meg tirrell has reached out to bristol-myers. up about 2% at 55.63 on word carl icahn has taken a stake. we do not know how large of a stake it is in that company but he sees it as a possible takeover target. i'm sure we'll have more on this as the afternoon draws on. folks, back to you. >> thank you, ty. listen, we need to know a lot more. >> i'm not going anywhere until we know some more information on that one. 17 minutes left in the trading session here. boy, incrementally it just continues to move higher. the dow up 125 points right now at 27 -- 20,749. you've been doing it for two weeks. it kept going up. >> we see the green eyed bull every day. >> two down days while i was gone i am told. >> you still decided to come back with all of that at steak. >> i did.

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shares of community health systems so i remembering today on a promising 2017 forecast. the hospital operator says it will divest more assets, alleviating some concerns over its debt load. the stock up 33.5% today. >> wow. >> wow. >> that's all you can say about that one. following the 2008 big bank crisis mortgage companies pulled out but deregulation plans could reshape the mortgage landscape. diana olick has more. >> hi, kelly. for the past six years there has been a staggering takeover in the mortgage market. large banks plagued by billion dollar government lawsuits began pulling back especially with government ensured fha loans. that left the door open for

non-bank lenders. these companies are also regulated but they're newer and they did not have all the leftover troubled loans that the big guys did. so take a look at the growth of non-bank lenders from 2010 to today. from just 10% of the market to more than half of it and beyond, names like quicken, loan depot and caliber home loans have moved into top spots for originations. now if the trump administration loosens regulations and big banks and stops suing for every infraction, will the big banks move in and the non-banks face stiffer competition? the ceo who used to run citi mortgage sees that and another threat. >> i fully expect that the banks will also step up, you know, their exposure to lending a lot more, and i expect it to be more from the regional banks than from the major banks. >> smaller regional banks taking more market share, but you also have higher interest rates which

will mean fewer refinances, it already does. that will up the competition for all lenders across the board. we've got lots more on this online realty check on cnbc.com back to you. >> i had loan depot originally. never heard of them before. thank you, diana. 11 minutes to go. dow is up 120. 250 points away from 21 pay on the dow. s&p is at 14. nasdaq up 24, russell up 9. tech pioneer bill gates says the makers of robots and companies that use them should be taxed to stem job loss. coming up, we're going to look at the impact on the rise of machines on our economy.

all right. moments ago art cashin told us the market on close order show an imbalance guess to the buy side. $1 billion worth. >> wow. >> i think we're seeing the results of that. the dow up 125 points. back to the highs for the session right now. just idling on here. >> yeah, on friday it was partly an expiration effect. we were negative, negative, negative. boom, on the bell we're seeing this play out. >> here we are minutes away from the closing bell. a look at what's been moving the markets today.

we are on record high watch. the dow on pace for its tenth record close since inauguration day. retail markets gave markets a boost. top sectors have been real estate and energy. joining us right now paul dietrich from fairfax capital markets and nick raisch from earnings scout. what do you make of this rally here? >> i actually believe the market is still undervalued. i mean, if you -- for the last eight or nine -- >> by what measure? >> for the last eight or nine years we've been looking at valuing the market based on the underlying assumption of 2% gdp growth. if you look at what almost everybody agrees is going to go through this year on economic policies, regulatory reform, tax reform, cutting corporate taxes from 35 to 15 or 20% and the big economic stimulus package of infrastructure, 1 trillion dollars, independent analysts believe that that will get us up as we were talking earlier to

3.5%. >> just this morning jack foghle came on and said he thinks the market is over valued. he doesn't see how with all of the things you mentioned growth gets over 2%. >> i'm telling you the independent economic analysts are saying we're going to get 1 1/4 to 1 1/2% based on the corporate tax returns. think about it. if you lower corporate taxes from 35% to 15 or 20%, that goes to the bottom line. those are earnings. and then we know the stock market responds well to economic stimulus. >> right. >> so 3.5%, we haven't seen that since the johnson and kennedy administrations and the reagan administrations. and that's why this market is going to look under valued when we look back. >> nick, what do you think? i mean, especially as it pertains to those earnings that everybody says is the life blood of the stock market. as long as we see growth there, we see the stock prices continue higher. do you see that right now? >> well, the last two earnings seasons, including this earnings season, what we're seeing after companies report, we're seeing earnings estimates for the next quarter out to two years into the future falling at increasing

rates and the market's been ignoring this. so based on the direction of earnings expectations, six months to two years into the future, prices have gotten ahead of themselves. >> doesn't that always happen though? >> no. they're falling at increasing rates, kelly. what we're seeing this earnings season is average companies reporting 61% of the companies in the s&p 500 that reported this earnings season are seeing their first quarter numbers go down by about 2.7%. last quarter they were falling at a rate of 2.2% and the quarter before that 1.9%. we're seeing estimates fall at rates -- >> even if we're seeing meaningful tax reform, whatever reform it's going to take, you'd see a decline in earnings growth at the same time. >> there's no decline in earnings growth. at that i can it to the bank. we're talking -- in 2017 the economy is going to be better. we're talking off of expectations which are already high. we think they need to be resettled a little bit lower to a little less rosie optimistic scenario and the prices need to be resettled a little bit lower,

too. >> all right. >> the only thing that could be happening is the street might be looking at 2019, 2020 estimates and 2021 estimates, some of the policies may take time to take effect. >> yes. >> the further you have to go out into the future to justify current prices, the more speculative the market. >> quite a stretch. >> all right. paul, nick, good to see you both. thank you for joining us today. >> thank you. appreciate it. we're coming back with the closing countdown in just a movement. >> see you after that. both on the track and thousands of miles away. with the help of at&t, red bull racing can share critical information about every inch of the car from virtually anywhere. brakes are getting warm. confirmed, daniel you ne to cool your brakes. understood, brake bias back 2 clicks. giving them the agility to have speed & precision. because no one knows & like at&t.

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couple minutes left here. i was gone two weeks and we want to do a quick review of the markets and what they've done in the last two weeks. yes, pretty good rally for the equity markets. the dow up 640 points. gain of 3%. yes, you're welcome america. we're in record territory. the ten year by my back of the envelope math roughly down 5 basis points. not much of a change. marking time in that time. wti net-net it's virtually the same but a lot of volatility in the meantime. that big decline that we saw and it's back above $54 a barrel. speaking of volatility, the vix is still below 12 in the 11 range and two voices that i respect very much, art cashin and jack vogel are getting sweaty palms, bob pasani.

>> it did spike up. march 20 the fed meetings pushed into that vix meeting. we were just talking to the guys. let's click the dow 21,000. let's go to the dow straight 25,000. we're toenl 250 points away from 21,000. >> nine record days in a row for the dow. going up 115 points. stay tuned for the second hour of "closing bell" with kelly evans and company. see you tomorrow, kel. > thank you, bill. welcome to the "closing bell", everybody. i'm kelly evans. what a way to start off the week. a huge surgeon wall street has the dow up 125 points on the bell. we're 3/4 of the way to dow 21k, better than half a percent move led by home depot, walmart, a few other names. s&p 500 broad market was actually stronger on a percentage basis.

2365 is the new record there. as for the nasdaq, up half a percent. 5865 is the new record there. 18 record highs on the nasdaq. now 19 this year. that's the most we've seen since 1999. we're on pace for a year like that. the russell 2000, the small caps, those up 3/4 of 1% to close at 1410, eight straight moves higher for the dow. we haven't seen that since last summer. all four of these major averages at record highs again today. now walmart was surging after announcing its ecommerce. business grew by 24% as the big box retailer takes aim at amazon, which stock is the better buy? we will debate that coming up. joining me today to talk about these markets, rob cox from reuters breaking news, paul hickey both are with us here. rob, i mean, just want to begin with you and some thoughts on, you know, where we sit. we're up 10% on the dow and s&p since the election. you know, i have people telling me a litany of things about

relative strength indexes and how it's, you know, this for the nasdaq, this for the s&p, levels like 80 which are not supposed to be the nasdaq. qqqs are 85. in other words, are things becoming totally detached from reality or is this reflective of the new economic reality? >> you know, kelly, we've talked about this before. they're anticipating something that's going to help the bottom line and that is essentially corporate tax reform, tax cuts. today was one of those days, like a normal day. there were no crazy tweets. we got this really respected general to be the national security adviser. you know, there's no distractions and so it makes you believe, which i think investors must have to believe to put stocks up to these levels, that something is going to get done. this is an example of how the economy can motor along as long as sort of self-inflicted crises don't pop up every single day from the white house. >> and, paul, it's not just u.s. markets that have been on a run. we have the german index, euro

stocks, swiss, argentine, brazil, canadian. all up 52 week highs. you look at the european pmis, those picked up nicely. u.s. flash pmis. we have the best start in a decade for the global ipo market. so, again, there's the performance of these markets since the election. paul, the russell is up 18% since november 8th. >> yeah. kelly, you're exactly right what you're mentioning there. there's not just one driver of this rally, there's three tail winds in the market's favor. you have earnings season, which is just starting to wind down and the results were very good, especially when you compare it relative to expectations, but more important to your point, you have good economic data, not only in the u.s. but around the world. we're seeing real strong economic data around the world that began in the middle of last year when inflation bottomed and has tircontinued and accelerate and then the pillar is washington and for all the talk

of turmoil and chaos in washington right now, you know, the market is looking through that and seeing, you know, less regulation, probably some tax relief and less fiscal stimulus. so there's -- >> let me -- >> there's a lot working in the market's favor which is why the market has reacted so positively. >> i was raising an eyebrow at lumber liquidators. having a huge session. paul, you said this was a great earnings season. was it really? it didn't feel -- i don't know, maybe because in the afternoon we had so many kind of ugly misses and stocks that were just getting, you know, whacked. by what measure do you think it was actually pretty good? >> well, you look at the earnings beat rate which was near the highest beat rate for the overall market since going back to 2010 in the low to mid 60s. you see the sales beat rate which was right in the middle of the road. guidance wasn't necessarily too bad. but it's been very forward prior

quarters. but the -- so you've seen good results there and in the -- take the technology sector. that sector's been doing great this year. in the s&p 500, 92% of companies in the technology sector beat earnings estimates. so you're having very strong results relative to expectations. i mean, like you said, there's some big disasters after hours every once in a while that we tend to focus on, but overall the numbers have been very good. >> yeah. >> here are some of the names that were all-time highs. amazon, apple, ee bay, ivago, broad com. those are in the tech space. then you had the consumer companies. this brings up the big deal making that might be taking place there. con agra, a number of different -- costco, for example. >> yeah. >> i mean, i could go on. all these industrials are up today. all parts of the economy, really, just levitating. we had oil prices moving higher. >> that's right. >> it seemed everywhere you looked. >> you're starting to see some

anecdotal evidence of the animal spirits that people have talked about. you can look at a walmart had a great quarter and, you know, walmart is no tech company, although obviously online sales were part of the good story but, you know, you're starting to see some consumer confidence. you saw home depot, again, that's an indication that the housing market seems to be relatively robust. you have things like m&a. you may just be popeyes. stowe, if you're a skier, big deal to see stowe get sold. i'm he not sure i'm happy about that. you're starting to see evidence of people like ray dalio at bridgewater talk about the animal spirits, people were afraid they would be dampend. there's visible evidence that that stuff is coming through. you're seeing with earnings, s&p 500 earnings will have gone up 7.5% according to reuters estimates. there are things to be happy about, and there's nothing to get in the way of our happiness. >> maybe it's all because spacex

successfully launched that booster, got the rocket back. let's stick with home depot. trading higher. as well as a stock buy back and on that note, more companies are using their cash for repurchase programs. bob pasani is taking a look at the impact that has had. these companies are shrinking dramatically in front of us. >> they are. they are hiking the dividend 29% and buying back $15 billion in stock. folks, that's nearly 9% of the shares outstanding. that is a huge buy back. home depot is already what i call a buy back monster. since 2003 they have cut their shares outstanding in half from 2.36 billion to 1.21 billion shares. they're not alone. a lot of companies have drastically cut shares in an effort to boost earnings. very simple idea. since 1997 ibm has cut its shares outstanding in half. exxon has cut its shares by 42%.

intel and cisco have cut theirs by 32% since 2001. buy backs are no panacea for stock growth. ibm woefully under performed the s&p 500. that's a five-year chart. they were beset by five year growth revenues. revenues were shrinking and there weren't any revenues from nascent businesses from like watson and others to replace it. the lesson is very simple. no amount of financial engineering, like buying back shares, can replace management's inability to grow the business. home depot grows the business, the stock goes up. ibm has trouble growing the business and the stock has trouble even with buy backs. >> maybe i should have said in terms of these companies, the share count is shrinking but, you know, if this is the right way for them -- if you're a shareholder, look at apple. if the companies are able to say, hey, our growth is pretty steady. maybe not all that dramatic. instead of reinvesting or

sitting on the cash piles, we're going to hand it back to you the shareholder and impof your value. why is that a bad idea? >> that's not a bad idea at all. don't think that's a panacea for growing the overall business. it can definitely help a company support its share price, but there's nothing that replaces growing the business. ibm's a good example. their business -- their stock price did not go up even when they were buying back shares five, six, seven, eight years ago. when they slowed down the buy back program in 2014 the share prices really dropped because they had less buy backs and at the same time their revenues were having a lot of trouble. >> and i'm wondering, paul, what effect all of these buy backs have had on the earnings per share that companies are reporting? >> well, like you said, it's a shrinking market as far as shares outstanding. following up on bob's point, sings the end of 2011 home depot has bought -- has shrunken its float by the fifth most company in the s&p 100. while there are questions of

questionable buy backs, the companies that buy back stocks and their stocks tank and they issue stock, overall the 20 companies in the s&p 100 that have bought back the most stocks since the end of 2011 are outperforming the s&p 500 over that time by 30 percentage points. so 115% gain versus about an 85% gain. so overall if your company and you're having increasing cash flow and you're using that to buy back stock, it's going to be a positive. but on the contrary, there are examples like ibm where they're buying back stock because they have nothing else to do, no better ideas and the stock hasn't done so well. >> right. but it's also not the worst idea in the world. let me bring you in, rob, on this point. this is going to become even more political because if there's tax reform and companies have access to their off shore cash there's this idea going around that they're going to somehow evilly use it only for buy backs. is it so bad even if it is used for some of that? >> no, it's not bad at all.

>> go ahead, bob. >> there's bob and there's rob. you go ahead, bob. >> what's so bad? i don't think it's a bad idea at all. wouldn't you, kelly, rather see the money invested in capital expenditures? >> it depends on the business. if they're investing in money losing prospects? >> what does that tell you? there's no prospects for growth. >> no, for their companies. rob cox, i'll ask you. i think somebody is telling me -- i read somewhere the other day, by the time a company gets into an index like the s&p 500, it's already had its growth. they're relatively mature. they might have ten years left and you could argue about whether it's a better idea to try to elongate your life by, you know, pouring a lot of money into capx or whether it's a better idea to return the capital to shareholders because you pretty much know the competitive landscape. >> every company is different. you have to assess the sources of the financial resources. if it's coming from a burgeoning business and they don't know

what to do with it as bob says, they don't know how to put it into capx and they give it back to shareholders, there's nothing wrong with that. the enterprise is debt and equity. it's constant and based on the earnings of that business. if you're robbing peter, i.e.,, you're robbing debt holders to pay shareholders it's not a good use of financial resources. it means that the financial resources that you have for the business are dwindling, that's of course terrible. ibm is perhaps an example of that. apple is on the other side of the spectrum. they have too much cash, they don't know what to do with it. giving it back, buying back shares is important. >> yeah. >> don't for get a lot of it. if you are borrowing money to buy back shares, you're doing that because it's tax efficient, right? that is a result of a tax code that allows you to deduct those interest payments. that is something that could be -- ideally will be on the table in any real corporate tax reform. >> we have to go, rob. real, real quick, if people -- the alternative to doing that is, look, you buy something, you

merge something. you know, the jury is out on whether that actually creates any value over time. we've got to go. >> yeah, agree completely. rob cox. bob pasani on the floor and bob hickey. thank you all. house republicans proposing to lower the corporate tax rate to no more than 20%. up next, the impact that would have on the financial sector and the companies that would stand to benefit the most. walmart surging on earnings despite a decline in profits as the big box retailer is spending big bucks to compete with amazon. so which one of those is a win? a stock brawl is coming up. you're watching cnbc first in business worldwide. my password? yes, sir, we need your password. the password that i use? yes, sir, your password. there's been another breach! sir! right. okay. i-h-a... ...t-e-m-y-j-o-b-1. ihatemyjob1? wanna get away?

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welcome back. the new he had of the environmental protection agency held a meeting with his staff today. kayla tausche joins us. >> reporter: hey, kelly. the mission of the environmental protection agency according to the website is to protect human health and the environment. in his first address the newest chief, scott pruitt, said the mission of the agency under the trump administration will be economic, to provide certainty for the companies it regulates. >> i believe that we as an agency and we as a nation can be

both pro energy and jobs and pro environment, that we don't have to choose between the two. i think our nation has done better than any nation in the world at making sure that we do the job of protecting our natural resources and protecting our environment while also respecting the economic growth in jobs our nation seeks to have. >> reporter: pruitt today reiterated he wants to return the power to regulate the environment back to the states and when he was oklahoma's attorney general he sued the epa two times. two voted for him for that reason. the trump administration has planned to roll back the climate action plan and the waters of the u.s. rule and it wants to release an estimated $50 trillion in untapped energy reserves on some state lands. how the administration goes about doing it, whether through legislation or executive order remains to be seen and also how the epa career staffers react to this remains to be seen because pruitt today said he's yet to

meet somebody at the agency who had been there for fewer than 19 years. >> implying that, you know, they're kind of career bureaucrats for that agency. kayla, he also gave a long interview to the journal over the weekend and he talked about economic growth and environmental regulation don't have to be tradeoffs, but he does seem to be trying to balance both his vision that everybody is aware for how he feels about the agency with the sense that he's not trying to undermine or threaten its very existence. >> right. it seems that he's trying to change the scope of the agency and the types of policies that it pursues. i think there is a question, kelly, of where the growth in the economy comes from. we know the trump administration wants to get to the 4, 5% growth level. a lot of that expectation is that it will come from energy companies, it will come from the untapped reserves, it will come from new projects that are green lighted by the epa and by the trump administration. how scott pruitt balances that we'll see. >> yes. kayla, thank you. kayla tausche in washington

today. financial stocks and really the whole market have been rallying on president trump's promise of tax cuts. here's what the president had to say when he met recently with business leaders at the white house. >> we are going to be cutting taxes massively for both the middle class and for companies, and that's massively. we're trying to get it down to anywhere from 15 to 20%, and it's now 35% but it's probably more 38% than it is 35, wouldn't you say? that's a big thing. >> financial stocks among the biggest beneficiaries, but what exactly benefits will bank stocks see from a tax cut? joining us are frank cannon and jeffrey hart who's a principal at sandler and o'neill. what's at steak? >> tax reform as proposed can be

a very good thing. i mean, if we look across the board financials tend to be high taxpayers and as a result that tax cut is going to fall to the bottom line of big banks and many financials better than some other industries that are benefitting from some tax breaks that are going to go away. >> jeff, could you name names in terms of ranking these companies as to who would be most exposed or most benefit from this kind of tax cut? >> i think you need to probably look at the more u.s. centric names. higher portion of their income coming. you'd be looking at bank of america, morgan stanley, jpmorgan. the further down you get market caps the better overall benefit because they're more u.s. centric. there's a lot going on in washington on the regulatory front, too. when you look at bank stocks, there's a lot of tail winds we haven't seen for quite a while. there had been head winds and there should be good news for the stocks. >> morgan stanley said $30 may be the new $20.

that was betsy grayczk. there seems like capital return among other things. what kind of moves do you think these companies would make if there is a tax cut? >> well, i mean, in theory it's going to clear up a lot of extra capital to be returned. it still has to go through the scar process but i think the sleeper advantage to something like this will be some of the indirect benefits. a lower tax rate is going to make investment more profitable. you would think it would push up capx, improve economic growth, you'd see loan growth pick up, good for the capital market. i think you'd see an optimism based revenue benefit in addition to the obvious mathematical lower tax rate is higher earnings. >> yeah, fred. i know i asked you about the big banks to begin with. what about the smaller players in community banks? >> they should be big beneficiaries though. in the high tax states such as california and new york, they lose a little bit of the benefit. if you pay a high estate tax you

don't get as big of a deduction it takes away. look at big taxpayers in states like texas and washington state where they're paying full taxes. it will be big beneficiaries. domestic base. the territorial bank system will be a big benefit to banks like jpmorgan. there's a lot of nuances and taxes that are going to be a little bit tricky. the devil will be in the details as we start to see the real plan come out. speaking of that, there's a name that might send chills down their spine, dave camp, fred, because his plan a couple of years back floated a bank tax to pay for corporate tax reform. if the border a justment is politically dead in the water, do you think the bank tax could be revived? >> it sure could. that is a risk to this sector. the other thing they're getting rid of for non-financials is interest deductions. one of the goals of that is to make the entire system less leveraged. one way policy makers may want to deal with that is some kind of interest on limit deductions

that banks pay. >> that's another great point. jeff, on this idea that there might be a bank tax, do you think that's feasible? what would the impact of that be? >> i don't personally think we see one. i think especially the way washington is now between trump, the republican control of both houses, it's a more business friendly environment and taxing banks directly would be against or anti-business. i think the attitude is to get more capital put to work in the economy to get more people investing and they would probably go the opposite way here. here at sandler we're factoring a 25% tax rate because we think there's going to be some progress there. >> fred and jeff, we'll leave it there for now. thank you both. >> thanks. let's send it over to dominic chu for a quick earnings alert. dom? >> kelly, we have shares of first solar up by a little over a percent on 77 shares on aftermarket valium. earnings came in better than expectations. earnings coming in at $1.24.

97 cents was the average analyst estimate. that beats the average of $413 million worth of sales overall. also looking at some of their guidance. they raised their 2017 revenue guidance to between 2.8 to 2 point be point $9 billion. on average analysts are looking for $2.5 billion. however, they reiterated their 2017 earnings guidance between break even and 50 cents per share. this falls below the 41 cents analysts were looking for. overall, kelly, we've seen a lot of them rally over the short squeeze over the last couple of days. nonetheless, up 14% year to date prior to this but still down 41% over the course of the past 12 months, kelly. back over to you guys. >> one of those earnings beat that paul was talking about. thank you, dom. a scandal rocking uber again. former engineer for the ride

sharing service charging sexism and sexual harassment. up next, reaction. plus, the rise of the robots has many concerned, including microsoft's bill gates. he now says it's time to tax the robots. that story coming up on the "closing bell." [vo] quickbooks introduces dney.

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holder and arianna huffington, let's get to deidre bosa. >> reporter: inside was an all hands meeting called by the ceo. arianna huffington flew in. she said they spent over an hour discussing women in the workplace and talking about that review that you mentioned that is being overseen by former ag eric holder. she also says that travis spoke about the mistakes he has made. that may be in reference to rude comments he's made or tasteless ad campaigns that uber has conducted in the past. she also said change doesn't usually happen without a catalyst. she says she hopes by taking the time to understand what's gone wrong and fixing it we can make uber better and contribute to improvements for women across the industry. let me go back and explain what's happened over the last

couple of days. sunday morning susan fowler, a former engineer, posted a bombshell of a blog post. she experienced sexual harassment and sexism in the workplace which she said was routinely ignored by hr and the company's executives. her post has sent shock waves not just through uber but through silicon valley because gender discrimination and diversity has been a problem. take a look at these numbers for instance. uber said yesterday that the percentage of women working in technology world is just 15%. that at other companies while still dismally low is higher. airbnb, for example, which is another private company, that number is at 26%. there is hope, however, that uber's investigation and the allegations will lead to a greater dialogue about diversity and women's rights in the workplace. kelly, back over to you. >> deidre, susan fowler is the

woman who blogged about her experiences. i was looking at her book, production ready micro services, building systems across an engineering organization. i don't understand half of the sub headlines of this book. she's clearly an extremely talented engineer. so the question more largely is for uber, especially, what changes internally are happening? also in the -- in the post that she described i found it interesting she said a lot of times there was all of this internal backstabbing and in fighting and people on their team didn't know if they were going to have a job, whether they'll be collapsed or expanded. she said, meantime, we were trying to keep the uber platform running. you wonder to what degree that is affecting the product line being degraded. >> reporter: what you're describing is what she calls organizational chaos. she talked about how sexism was at work and the game of

thronesesque policy. this site right here, uber's headquarters, has been a site of controversy, trump's inauguration. there was a human blockade because people didn't like his involvement with a trump administration. uber has been on a bit of a different pr direction whereas in the past kalinick has brushed off events like this. some say maybe they're cleaning up their act and worrying about pr more because perhaps it's looking to go public within the next year or few years, kelly. that could be playing into all of this. certainly we have seen a different side of uber in the last couple of months. >> that's true. it does seem like a sea change. deidre, thank you. outside of uber's headquarters. time for a cnbc news update with contessa brewer. >> reporter: hi. the man accused of killing six men in a quebec city mosque made

a brief court appearance today. during that hearing the prosecutor submitted evidence to alexander bissonnette's defense lawyer. he requested a ban which means they can't make that evidence public and the judge agreed. chaotic town hall meeting. people started shouting questions at the senator as soon as he walked in. they were particularly upset that he supported the confirmation of betsy devos. >> i don't think people had a chance to hear me as much as they normally would at a town meeting because there were long speeches and there were some applaus applauses, some inexperience but if they want me to listen to them, i'm willing to listen to them. a shakeup in the los angeles lakers front office. magic johnson named as president of basketball operations. jim bus and the gm mitch kupchek

had to be relieved of their duties. i would say she threw her brother under be the bus. >> wow. >> jeane bus, brother bus. >> nicely done. i'm just thinking about luke watson, you know, what happened -- the team at this point, they were starting to get in their rhythm a little bit. i think they have a better record than the knicks. magic johnson. >> yeah. they're going to get a lot of attention on social media, that's for sure. >> contessa, thank you. walmart showing its best numbers in four years today. digital sales up 29% making some retail watchers wonder if it has opened a new front. the walmart versus amazon stock brawl is next. also, more and more millionaires are putting a shrimp on the bobbie. coming up, the country that's attracting more millionaires than the u.s.

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let's take a look how we finished the day on wall street. the dow up 118 points. 20,743 believe it or not. the s&p up 14 to 2365. the nasdaq up 27, 5865 is your level. i think the 19th record close this year for the nasdaq.

most we've had to date since 1999. the russell 2000 up to 1410. record closes for all the major averages. we have a news alert on tribune. >> reporter: tribune up 2.5% on light volume. we are getting headlines coming out that starboard value has reported a 6.6 stake in tribune media. this is an upping. he already had a stake in this company around 2.3% as of the end of last year. a significant boost in the stake. also in the filings they're saying that starboard valley has said they purchased the shares of tribune on the belief that the shares when purchased were undervalued. that's boilerplate wording with some of these filings. however, we are seeing the shares move a little bit in the after hours session. this is a stock that's down so far marginally year to date, however, has gained about 12,

13% over the last year. back over to you. >> thank you, dom. walmart rallying after announcing a big jump and online revenue in the fourth quarter. the retail giant's profits fell 18%. in the past year amazon is at more than 60, 6-0%. walmart is up only 10%. which stock is the better buy right now? here to debate are joseph agnesi and ross gerber from gerber kawasaki. joe, i'll begin with you because you think it's walmart that's the better buy. why? >> that's right. i think as walmart expands online offerings, lower prices, speed up delivery that they're going to gain share of ecommerce. in addition, they've been training their employees and improving end stop positions in stores so that also improves the in-store experience. the combination of faster online sales and a better experience in stores should help the company gain and defend market share.

>> all right. ross, but you're going with amazon. >> well, that seems like a no brainer. amazon is dominating retail in every corner. it actually reminds me of walmart back in 1985 when it was a good company, but walmart is so behind the ball in getting into retail online and then they buy jet d.com which is a total dog. every ecommerce site they're buying, they're companies that don't integrate with each other. they're not good with technology. we like the attempt, we wish them luck but the truth is walmart is going the way of sears. >> joe? >> well, i think it's a mistake to write off walmart. it's still early in the game. they acquired jet just a couple of months ago. as you can already see, we're already starting to see results. going to focus on investment of ecommerce. i'm extremely confident that through a significant expansion, they're going to have more

competition with faster delivery to people's home. they'll be a tougher competitor. >> what makes you think they'll execute on this? their website is garbage. the only reason someone would buy something from walmart is it's cheaper and with margins so low they basically have to sell at a loss. with rising wages and 20% of walmart's business, remember, is in mexico. they have over 3,000 stores in mexico and how is trump going to affect walmart's business there. so i think you're not weighing the reality of bricks and mortar dying enough in your model. >> the mexican business is a local business in mexico. i think you're confusing that with the import issue, which is a whole different issue. it's not going to affect 20% of the mexican business. >> the mexican business gets more expensive and there's less sales. >> hang on. go ahead, joe. >> even with their imports from mexico it won't be an issue to

competitors because they have leverage. something that will be passed on but because of walmart's scale. that could be a benefit to gaining share for walmart. >> down 20% on a strong holiday season so we know they're just selling for less margin is the only way they're goosing sales. >> ross, let me ask you real quickly about amazon because a lot of people who might totally agree with what you're saying about the functionality of amazon, it's up 60%. make the case for owning amazon in the long term. >> the case is we're going to be using it in 20 years when we're buying stock. on a price to sales it's not that expensive. what we're looking at is what is the earnings power versus what they're investing. considering they're putting alexas in their home we'll hear you talking about something, you don't have anymore, then i'll

just send it to you. they're so smart and so creative and we expect the revenue to continue to grow. the biggest issue is what business do we get in there next. >> joe, last word to you? >> we think walmart is very well-positioned. it's not too bad. they'll take share from amazon. >> joseph and ross, making their case. amazon versus walmart. you can make up your own minds. we have a news alert to get to. dom chu. >> how about more sports for social media companies. this is according to a report citing sources saying that major league baseball is in advanced talks with facebook to live stream one game per week for the upcoming baseball season. this comes as the wars heat up to live stream. twitter has it. this will be a big deal to see if this happens. back over to you. >> no disclosure of price as of

yet. we'll see if anything does come in the coming days. >> all right. facebook down a little bit. thank you, dominic chu. millionaires are migrating. we'll tell you the money and the new tax for companies on their robots. those details are next. hey nicole. hey! i just wted to thank your support team for walking me through my first options trade. we only do it for everyone gary. well, i feel pretty smart. well, we're all about educating people on options strategies. well, don't worry, i won't let this accomplishment go to my head. i'm stilthe same old gary. wait, you forgot your french dictionary. oh, mucho gracias. get help on options trading with thinkorsm, only at td ameritrade. it's a performance machine.er. with this degree of intelligence... ...it's a supercomputer.

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announced within the next couple of weeks. one thing -- one of the things president trump says will be included is a lower corporate tax rate, but microsoft co-founder bill gates is suggesting a new tax for u.s. companies, and it has to do with robots taking over human jobs. >> right now the human worker does $50,000 worth of work. in the factory that income is taxed. if the robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think that we'd tax the robot at a similar level. >> so should there be a tax on robots? let's bring in oren from the allen institute and martin ford, rise of the robots, technology and threat of a jobless future. martin, what do you think about this proposal? >> i think bill is absolutely right, that we need to rethink our taxation scheme. as jobs are automated, it doesn't make sense to rely so heavily on taxes on labor, but i'm a bit skeptical of the idea

specifically of a robot tax. for one thing, what exactly is a robot? if you're talking about factories, this is simple. this will impact offices, this will impact people sitting in front of computers, white collar jobs, and that of course is not a robot at all, that's just software. so how do you figure that out? are you going to send the irs in to analyze every piece of software to find out is it automating jobs? that's very complicated. another thing is what happens if every country doesn't do this? for example, what happens if china doesn't have a robot tax? i mean, china right now is the biggest market in the world for factory robots, so obviously if we tax robots and they don't, that's going to be a competitive issue for us. >> oren, the issue that was raised about what is a robot is the core one. listen, i imagine a guy like bill gates especially has thought this through. i've seen these prototypes. for example, one of these snake like robot arms that can do precision manufacturing, how do

you distinguish that something that's four inches tall is the same thing that looks like a human like was in the diagram? i don't understand. >> right. >> go ahead, martin -- i'm sorry, go ahead, oren, please. >> i was going to say i think that martin is right, that it is very difficult to distinguish between these two technologies. i think the bottom line is that this problem of losing jobs is very real, but this is the wrong solution. i don't think mr. gates would have been in favor of a tax on pcs at the time where pcs were surging and potentially low level clerical jobs were taken away by pcs, by microsoft office. so we have here really an opportunity to increase productivity, which is something we all want, and as martin said, we don't want to hand an

advantage to foreign companies who won't be paying a robot tax. >> martin, the other thing, too, this will ultimately similarly result in increased prices i would imagine for the consumers. the border adjustment tax is bad, it would raise taxes, any tax would do the same thing. how high would that tax have to be that it would actually displace the robot and make somebody hire a worker instead? >> i think it would have to be quite significant because robots are going to have many advantages. it's not just costs, it's the fact that increasingly robots are going to do things that people can't do. they're going to out perform people. at some point the robot is going to be indispensable at any cost anyway. i agree it's really surprising that bill gates would actually say that this tax might slow automation because it's surprising that he would want to slow progress. this is progress and what we want to do is leverage that progress but we want to make

sure that everyone benefits from that, not just a few people. >> all right. gentlemen, thank you. martin ford, orec, as we look for other ways to raise revenue and keep jobs. millionaires on the move. and coming up, is tesla the next amazon? gene munster explains what he thinks test ha is getting wrong.

welcome back. millionaires are migrating at a record rate. the countries that are leaving and where they're putting down new roots. >> thank you. >> you could call them the migratory millionaires. never before has the world had

so many of them. last year a record 82,000 millionaires moved to a different country. according to a new study. the numbers are up 60% just in the last four years. so huge growth there. where are they moving to? australia tops the list with 11,000 millionaires moving down under. australia for the first time beating the u.s. which had 10,000 millionaires moving in. canada ranked third with 8,000. followed by the uae and then new zealand. the wealthy are looking first and foremost for good schools for their kids and safety for their families. then lifestyle, clean air, space and health care. all those important. but taxes have traditionally driven them but not so much now. the top country millionaire flight was france. with taxes, religious safety and

tensions. china losing 9,000 of them. most of them citing education and the environment. then followed by brazil, india and turkey as the biggest net losers. the migrant millionaires represent just a small part of the total number. and china has more millionaires than they're actually using. but a time, a fierce debate around immigration. this is one group the countries competing to let in. because they bring presumably jobs and spending and hopefully new businesses down the road. >> it sounds like, my first thought was new wealth in australia shopping. they're eager to tell the world about how they're attracting millionaires. the other thing was the places they're leaving. we know that china's problems. but for france to be top on that list. and they've already had so much. this is an ongoing trend.

>> china is creating new millionaires to replace the ones that are leaving. france is not. it is a really troubling sign for france that they're losing so many. with australia it is almost a direct correlation with china losing. most of those 11,000 leaving china are going to australia. >> you don't think the french are going to australia? >> they're going wherever they can go. >> the u.k. look at these neighborhoods. >> and the u.s. is a top destination for the europeans. others are latin america. a lot from venezuela, brazil, and argentina. throws millionaires moving into the u.s. >> would more be coming? do you think the u.s. would be number one if writ easier to get into the country. >> absolutely. it used to be about avoiding taxes. right now it is about safety. safety for your money and for your family. we all know the u.s. is the highest ground on the planet for just personal and financial

safety. so yes, more coming if they can get it. >> meanwhile they're going to australia. i remember michael lewis described it as texas. up next, remembering a pro capitalism scholar when "closing bell" comes right back. yes, sir, your password. there's been another breach! sir! right. okay. i-h-a... ...t-e-m-y-j-o-b-1. ihatemyjob1? wanna get away? now you can with southwest fares as low as 59 dollars one-way. yes to low fares with nothing to hide. that's transfarency. sfx: clap, clap, ding

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take a moment to remember the scholar michael novak who passed away on friday at the age of 83. he was the author of dozens of works. most notably his 1982 book called the spirit of democratic capitalism. he had been a socialist but said observation and intense reflection persuaded him over time, he couldn't remain one. instead he embraced democratic capitalism even as the catholic church and his intellectual colleagues were hesitant to do so. he wrote it was the activities and not the intentions of businessmen that are favorable to social progress. more favorable than the structures of the military, the air to know rasy, even the church. he wrote that removing poverty and tyranny, perhaps our best hope with laid with the much

despised system. he helped 38 theoretical and theological foundations. and he said words from 1982 that certainly that resound today. thank you for watching "closing bell." we'll see you tomorrow. americans are making money in the stock market. now hitting all time highs again today. the dow soaring triple digits. the s&p has add $2 trillion. i have my pinky to my mouth since the election and all four indexes are up 10% since donald trump was elected president. the small caps, that's the big winner. up 18%. hello. good evening. i